The courtyard still smelled of damp grain when Bai Jiu brought his sketches and the manifest to the records room. The green wax seal had been copied twice: once before the crate entered the lock room and once beside the dispatch sheet. The stamp matched the district depot’s mark, but the number pressed into the wax did not appear on the public list.
Ning spread the wagon sheets across the end of the table. She had not written a conclusion. Each crate had a wagon number, a seal, and the name of whoever had carried it. The missing batch sat in its own line. The original manifest showed the first two wagons loaded before the extra crate appeared.
Bai tapped the number. “It was written on the label after the first list was signed.”
“Can we tell that from the ink?” Yan asked.
“Not from ink alone. The depot sheet has the same number in a later hand, but it doesn’t say who wrote it or why.” Bai turned the page so everyone could see. “The seal itself shows the box was closed at the depot. We can’t tell who chose what went inside.”
Ren sat opposite them, hands clasped between his knees. The green wax crate had been at the rear of his wagon. “I remember the label being changed. A worker came over with a strip and pressed it on top of the old one.”
